2 Killed In Run-ins With City Police

Victims' Families Demanding Answers

In an eight-hour period over the weekend, Chicago police were involved in the fatal shootings of two unarmed motorists, one a Northwestern University football player from Calumet City who was less than two weeks from graduating, the other a computer analyst from Chicago's Brainerd neighborhood.

Robert Anthony Russ, 22, a former Thornton Fractional North High School prep star, was shot once while struggling with an officer during a traffic stop at 1 a.m. Saturday on the southbound Dan Ryan Expressway, police said.

Hours earlier, at 5:30 p.m. Friday, an officer shot and killed LaTanya Haggerty, 26, during a traffic stop at King Drive and 64th Street that followed a chase. The officer believed Haggerty was holding a weapon, authorities said. Investigators later determined that the object was a large red padlock.

In another Chicago police shooting Saturday, an officer wounded a teenager who is believed to have shot another boy in the back. That case is under investigation.

Police determined Saturday morning that the Russ shooting, which took place on the Dan Ryan near 28th Street, was justifiable, according to Lauri Sanders, a department spokeswoman. The investigation into Haggerty's death is continuing, police said.

Meanwhile, grieving family members and friends of the two victims were calling for wider investigations into the shootings.

"There's got to be some deep research on that issue," DeVille said as he stood with a group of mourners outside the Haggerty home in the 9200 block of South Laflin Street. "These policemen are trained, professional persons. Why would your gun be pulled when you're just telling (someone) to get out of your car?"

Russ' parents said officers told them that their son, a 6-foot-4-inch, 235-pound former defensive end on the Northwestern football team, had been shot accidentally.

Police told them the officer's bullet traveled through Russ' shoulder and pierced his heart. But the explanation puzzled Russ' relatives, who doubted he could have been shot from that angle during a struggle because of his size.

"There was no reason. I can see them beating him up, something. (That way, we could) go to the hospital to see him," said Brandi Spencer, 20, Russ' sister. "But they just killed him."

Haggerty's family also had questions Saturday, but said no police were available to answer them. As her brother, Maurice Haggerty Jr., sat with friends outside the Georgian home Haggerty shared with her family, he said that, in the 24 hours since her shooting, no officers had contacted them with their side of the story.

Haggerty was the passenger in a 1986 Oldsmobile sedan that two officers noticed was blocking traffic in the 8800 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue, Sanders said.

After refusing the officers' request to roll down his window, the driver tried to back over the officers, then sped off, she said.

After other officers blocked the car at King and 64th, the driver, Raymond Smith, 24, jumped out while Haggerty refused officers' requests to leave the vehicle, Sanders said. An officer told investigators she then saw Haggerty brandish something shiny.

"When she saw the shiny object, she thought it was a gun and fired a shot," Calumet Area Sgt. Roy Kwilos said.

Haggerty died at Cook County Hospital of one wound to the shoulder about 45 minutes after the shooting, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Police apprehended Smith nearby after a struggle. He faces charges of aggravated assault, Sanders said, because of his alleged attempt to run over the officers. He was released Saturday night after posting bond.

Maurice Haggerty remembered his sister as a quiet woman who was afraid of guns and had left her home Friday to enjoy an evening with an old friend from Washington High School.

LaTanya Haggerty graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1996, her brother said, and worked as a computer analyst at a downtown encyclopedia company.

He called for a thorough examination of the events leading up to his sister's death.

"I'd like the mayor, the head of the Police Department, somebody, to show this family more credibility than they've been showing," he said. "I don't know what went through their minds. . . . The only thing I know is my sister's not here today."

Asked about the shootings Saturday, Mayor Richard Daley said there would be an investigation but declined any other comment.

In the incident on the Dan Ryan, Russ died after he allegedly struggled with an officer trying to remove him from his vehicle, police said.

Sanders said two police cruisers began to follow Russ near Balbo and Lake Shore Drives early Saturday because officers believed Russ was driving erratically and changing lanes without using signals.